Who Killed the Megaverse?

Jay Verkuilen · Mar 22, 2019

cbwjm said:
What I like most about these articles is that I often get ideas of books to read. I loved continuing the adventures of Conan via de Camp's novels and now I'm going to have a read of his science fiction.

The Appendix N list has some very good stuff in it.

pauldanieljohnson · Mar 22, 2019

If the game isn't designed with Sci-Fi elements in mind from the start, you've got serious potential balance issues. As soon as you introduce laser guns, jet packs, and stun grenades, there really isn't any need for a wizard.

Reynard · Mar 22, 2019

pauldanieljohnson said:
If the game isn't designed with Sci-Fi elements in mind from the start, you've got serious potential balance issues. As soon as you introduce laser guns, jet packs, and stun grenades, there really isn't any need for a wizard.

Isn't that true of a fiery crossbow, boots of flying and dust of choking and sneezing? If we are talking about finding rare and/or ancient tech (which the post clearly is) what difference does it make?

Lanefan · Mar 22, 2019

Von Ether said:
If a sci-fi element falls in the woods and a player doesn't hear it, does it exist. Or does that make it a Schrodinger's element? That might have been a thing to some of the past games I played in. If a GM had sci-fi elements in a game and we never bumped into them, they pretty much didn't exist but for the GM.

That's why if I have something like that in the games I run, I put them front and center because I want the players to engage in them. Not that either way is right or wrong (other GMs may be saving the sci-fi as a plot twist in the game.)

In my case they've met (and sometimes destroyed!) some of the sci-fi elements already; and unless the story takes a fairly significant left turn at some point - which is always possible - those elements and others will I hope become much more significant later.

And, by later I might mean years from now. As DM of a long-running campaign I have to look at the long-term angles, and only release "now" what has to be released now while saving the rest for later.

I suspect that many GMs who didn't want psionics in their game (for good mechanical reasons) used the "no sci-fi" excuse instead of just saying "no."

I don't at all equate psionics with sci-fi, though, and don't see the connection you're making. They're completely unrelated things, fully independent of each other.

Lanefan · Mar 22, 2019

pauldanieljohnson said:
If the game isn't designed with Sci-Fi elements in mind from the start, you've got serious potential balance issues. As soon as you introduce laser guns, jet packs, and stun grenades, there really isn't any need for a wizard.

Oh, I'm not so sure about that.

For one thing, maybe it takes wizard-grade intelligence to be able to operate any of this stuff; where anyone else trying it is liable to blow themselves up along with anyone/anythng nearby.

Never mind that sure, you can have laser guns and jet packs, but unless you can find a fuel or power source for them they're sooner or later going to run out - if they even had any power left in them when found in the first place. No big deal.

R_Chance · Mar 22, 2019

And no one has mentioned Empire of the Petal Throne yet? Published in 1975 by TSR using pretty much D&Dish rules. An alien world colonized in the far future (c. 60,000 plus yars iirc), later isolated in a pocket dimension with it's civilization collapsing (and new / barbaric civilizations lasting thousands of years rising and falling). resulting in a "fantasy" world complete with aliens ("nonhumans" who were truly alien), "magic" (using interdimensional energy), technological items from small eye shaped devices (basically ray weapons of different types), to robots, genetically created "undead", to aircars and the "Lightning Bringer" (a mechanized artilley vehicle with a laser cannon)? This was the first setting done by TSR, predating Greyhawk etc. (as a published setting). Science fantasy.

*edit* Things added and edited

Hussar · Mar 22, 2019

Jay Verkuilen said:
I actually take Gygax at his word on this, insofar as he was talking about his own personal influences and inspiration. Instead, my feeling is that many of the clearly Tolkien-Influenced parts were "fan service" and not things that inspired Gygax himself. He cites Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions, Pratt and de Camp's The Incomplete Enchanter, Conan, Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Michael Moorcock's Elric, and Jack Vance's Dying Earth, among other sources. Having read all of these, their influence is very clear.

I do not deny there are parallels. Hobbits/halflings I'll 100% grant and there are a number of other parallels, of course: Ents/treants, dwarves to a large but not total degree, and some other monsters. The 1E ranger is also a pretty clear port.

However, there's a A LOT of points of departure and signs of other influences, many of which are exactly the things he cited in what became Appendix N (originally a Dragon article?). Elves in D&D aren't really like Tolkien elves, though, and clearly draw on other sources. There's no "Thieves' Guild" in Tolkien, but there sure is one in Lankhmar. Dwarves have a strong resemblance to Hugi in Three Hearts and Three Lions and the D&D troll is a direct lift, bearing no resemblance to Tolkien trolls at all. The kind of crazy dungeoneering that existed in early D&D isn't really the sort of thing that fits in Lord of the Rings, but it appears in some of the sources, most notably in some of Leiber's stories and in a few Conan stories, though The Hobbit is a better fit. The kinds of episodic tales that made up various adventures were also not what is featured in the kind of epic fantasy that Tolkien epitomizes. However, they are a key aspect of the other sources. There's a lot of other things: Magic functions differently, there are clerics, the tone is way different for the most part especially for classic D&D, and so on.

All that said, it is undoubtedly the case that D&D took off in no small part because of Tolkien's popularity, but as I said, that's why I consider the Tolkeinisms to be more of the order of "fan service" than a direct inspiration.

Oh, dahellwiddit. I'll flog this equine

Sure, no one is saying that Tolkien is the be all and end all of D&D. But, good grief, Balor (originally named a Balrog!), color coded dragons, on and on and on. Heck the notion of the adventuring PARTY rather than a lone hero and maybe a sidekick, certainly isn't part and parcel of pulp action stories. The whole "ensemble cast" thing is a direct port from Tolkien. It's probably easier to list the things D&D didn't lift from Tolkien, rather than the things they did.

I mean, good grief, if we weren't porting from Tolkien, why are the original races - Human, Elf, half-elf, Dwarf, Halfling? You'd think with all these other inspirational sources, we'd have at least one non-Tolkien PC race in the first twenty or thirty years of core rules other than half-orc, when orcs are lifted straight from Tolkien anyway.

I mean, good grief, it took 4e to give us the first non-Tolkien core race and people actually bitched about it. THAT'S how ingrained Tolkien is in the game.

Ravenheart87 · Mar 22, 2019

Mercurius said:
I always found Gygax's downplaying of the Tolkien influence to be rather disingenuous. Tolkien was obviously a huge influence, from elves-dwarves-halfings-orcs to "You meet in a tavern" to rangers to Smaug to...well, it goes on and on. IIRC, Gygax spoke of Tolkien somewhat like a petulant teen rebelling against a parent that they want to distance themselves from but unconsciously emulate.

Gygax spoke out against Tolkien because he didn't like his works - he was more of a sword & sorcery fan, and found Tolkien's works tedious. The reason why tolkienian elements were included was his players, who wanted to play such characters. His elves and half-elves were everything but tolkienian by the way - rather, they are more akin to the elves in Poul Anderson's stories, and the Basic line's elf class is pretty much Elric without a patron.

dwayne · Mar 22, 2019

I really think 5th edition has the potential to be a great base for anything really as the rules and power creep can be controlled by the gm very well. I have been looking at a conversion of the old d20 modern rules on the web, as the classes based off abilities and the limiting of casting is a great fit for a modern setting. I think as a modern setting, the tech would be much more easy and old magic would fall more out of common use due to lost belief in the gods and logic and rationality would prevent it to some existent. The show American Gods is a TV show to see what might be as new modern gods seek to subvert the old. The dresden files is another set of books i also liked and the TV show never got close to the books but as ok but not great.

S'mon · Mar 22, 2019

Bullets do do more damage than arrows - bullets tear, arrows slice. Rifles do a *lot* more damage. Within a D&D context that just means more hit points in damage - you certainly don't need to turn the game into Saving Private Ryan when the guns appear.

I used to do a lot of crossover stuff in my old 1e AD&D campaign - Arasaka power armour troopers vs Norse gods!

4e D&D's mythic tone did not suit it, but in 5e it should work fine. I think the
weapon stats in the 5e DMG are the right approach, just tweak them a bit if you want, but don't try to shift genre - high level D&D with guns should be The Avengers, not Full Metal Jacket.